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Brief Description of Work:
Figurative ceramic sculpture
Training and Experience:
Educated at Westcliff High
School and Southend Art School. His interest in the Arts led him to
explore various fine art media. However, he was also drawn to drama
and after studying acting, he worked in many films, television
dramas and the theatre. He also made several hit recordings in the
late 1950s.
Selected Exhibitions:
1996 - Two Man - Beetles Gallery,
Hampshire
Group - Earth and Fire, Rufford
Group - Dorset
Arts Week
Group - Cornish Guild Trellawarren
1996 - One Man
Aberystwyth University, Wales
Three Man University of Malta,
Malta
Group - Slovenia Arts Council, Lublicanca
Group - Lyn
Strover Gallery, Cambridge
Group - Garden Gallery, Hampshire
1997 - Group - Black Swan Gallery, Somerset
Group - 3D
Gallery, Bristol
Group - Laburnham Gallery, Cumbria
One Man
- Best of British Crafts, Surrey
Two Man - Bake House Gallery,
Surrey
Group - Tim Andrews Gallery, Devon
Group - European
Festival, Aberystwyth, Wales
One Man - Jan Bael Gallery, Belgium
Group - 'On Line Gallery', Southampton
Other Activities:
He has been Head of Art and Design at
Milton Abbey Public School for several years and continues to
lecture and demonstrate at various art colleges and show his work in
galleries around Great Britain and abroad including university of
Westminster Harrow Camous and University of South West of England
Ian has also written several books for 'Pitmans' and 'A
& C Black' publishers:
Kiln Building 1977 (co-winner of Best Craft Book
Award)
Ceramic Sculpture
1992
Kilns 1995
Artists
Statement:
One of the goals toward which I strive when engaged in the activity
of manipulating clay is to work from the creative union of the
conscious and the unconscious thought. Both in the use of imagery
and in the development of sculptural considerations to form, light,
colour and space as well as other factors that are peculiar to
firing clay forms. Surface texture, glaze and reduction, control
many decisions regarding the final outcome.
My imagery is gleaned form experiences, from observing
situations, other cultural backgrounds, photographs, along with
music and literature, visual and graphic imagery both past and
present.
The conscious element of controlling surface tension and form may
appear random at times and are more or less successful in different
pieces. The very process of Raku and Salt Glaze place very special
demands on me as a maker and the materials used became a battlefield
of the elements of earth, fire and water, which only occasionally I
am able to control. However the thin line is always ever present,
that of trying to avoid the "kitsch" or becoming a conveyor and
illustrator of others imagery and dogma.
"True works of art are about themselves.
Their value relies upon the aesthetic of their own
emergence and possibilities opened up to an
audience."
This statement implies an object must exist for its own sake and
so in my work the starting point is mine, and mine alone. But it can
take on others truth; that of the viewer with new meanings from
which they draw their own reality.
It seems to me there are parallels about removing distance when
we look at Art. For example, when looking into space we know that
the further we look, the farther back in time we are seeing. Time
and Space becoming the dimension. If this is so, our view of the
universe will, little by little, change entirely. This happens as
time and ideas evolve. Ultimately it is about identity: who are and
where we are as well as how we perceive things. David Hockney
said:
"If you are an artist you will see in a sculpture of a figure or
artefact something the Historian or Critic will not. It’s that,
somebody made the piece with his hands and the person who made it
had similarities to yourself. That Artist too had an urge to make
something to depict something, to represent some form of PERCEIVED
REALITY, to represent and reproduce experience even though he lived
in a totally different era or society. The Artist shares with the
other Artist the activity and the same urge to communicate a way of
seeing things in the world."
"Art captures the essence which reality sometimes more, sometimes
less, spreads thin. In Art, the essence present itself as an
undiluted, powerful possibility and because Art incarnates what is
possible, it can and does mean anything to the viewer"
"Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time
future and time future contained in time past. If all time is
eternally present; all time is unredeemable."
These surfaces and tensions I search for, those that preoccupy my
time are AMBIVALENT reflecting the passage of time, the material,
the makers hand in combination with the final METOMORPHUS OF
FIRE.
Never the less working methods, material size as well as patterns
of work edit these ideas by their restrictions. New techniques have
come with time and a great deal of my studio hours are spent
involved in experimentation. But are ideas led, not process led and
increasingly seem to break many conventional rules.
This parallel development of expressive form and the making
process using modelling, throwing carving grow in juxtaposition
between the figurative man and animal relationships of my recent
work. These repeat, are born, reabsorbed and develop within an
accessible genre from the familiar world around my home in
Dorset.
Although no longer a vessel maker, I retain the Leach tradition
of heart and hand but feel as do others that today’s Potters should
address themselves to today’s problems and whatever way we work in
whatever genre, either as a Sculptor or Potter, the process is about
solving and development.
In Britain and the rest of the western world our position is
felicitous in that we are exposed to so many cultural influences.
The Meso American and European traditional forms and images combined
with Pop artefacts, Graffiti and all the other visual symbols that
we are bombarded with in our daily lives have had an influence on
the work produced now. Cultist Chic also still has a strong pull and
reward. As does the clinging to tradition without extending it
forward. Nowadays since there is little need to make Sacred Art
anymore, we do not work form religious convictions in the same way
as earlier artists. They, however humble, gave their objects
meaning, visual poise and imbued them with an intense feeling of
inner spirituality. Hence the power that many of these objects exude
is derived from the psyche itself and not just slavish gesture to
reproduce Art as yet another consumer product.
Our modern folk forms and the street culture they feed are no
longer produced from any clear conviction of the role they are to
play in a modern society. It is a dilemma that all Art is caught up
in. As with more archetypal sculptures created to embody nourishment
and the glorification of some deity made so long ago by a forgotten
hand, the fundamental need is still with us to continue to produce
thing so beauty and to extend our creative horizons however tenuous
this might seem in these uncertain times.
One of ceramic’s contemporary roles that it continues to provide
Aesthetic Consolation and enrichment of daily life on a domestic
scale.
Further
Information:
A visit to Ian Gregory’s house in deepest Dorset immediately answers
some of the questions posed by his current work. Ansty is little
more than a hamlet close to the famous eighteenth century village
Milton Abbas. A cluster of rose covered houses and cottages centred
on The Fox, a surprisingly large and bustling pub. Ian Gregory lives
in an eighteenth century thatched cottage which boasts a paradise of
a garden. Two large spring fed ponds and a deep and lazy stream are
surrounded by a jungle of trees, shrubs and plants in splendid
ordered disorder. On the lawn chickens and ducks peck and preen
disturbed in their daily routine by the occasional token chase form
Gurt the family boxer. There is little wonder that with his glass
fronted workshop set amongst this quintessential English idyll he
has gravitated toward the animal kingdom as the outlet for his
consummate modelling skills.
Ian Gregory came to ceramics in the 1960s as a refugee from show
business. At the end of the fifties and the early sixties he had a
successful career as a TV and film actor even making forays into the
pop charts under the guidance of legendary producer Joe Meek.
Disenchantment with ‘the business’ and a desire to live with his six
children in the country led him to Dorset and to Crumble
Cottage.
During the seventies Gregory became well known as a saltglazer
making a range of domestic tableware and miniature furniture in a
medium little used by studio potters at that time.
The miniature furniture certainly struck a chord with the buying
public and many hundreds of pieces were made. Perhaps though, the
most memorable works of that period are his large architectural
pieces. Tall Victorian buildings often incorporating a shops front
packed with produce climbed onward and upward each storey cleverly
modelled in architectural detail. I remember a particularly tall
example in the Cranks Restaurant at Dartington, Devon, measuring a
full seven feet high! His 200 ceramic preview invitations in the
form of a shop front, enticing collectors to an exhibition of Martin
brothers pots at Christie’s Auction Rooms and the Richard Dennis
Gallery in Kensington Church Street, have become collectors’ pieces
in their own right.
For as long as potters all over the world have fashioned clay
into vessels they have also made both animal and human
representations from the same clay. Indeed the oldest known ceramic
objects are the strangely elegant pear shaped effigies of the female
human form thought to be fertility pieces.
Throughout the millennia clay figures have been imbued with
important cultural and religious meaning, others were and still are
made purely as ornaments. Figurative sculptors presently abound in
the contemporary ceramic scene. There is a very thin line to be
drawn between that which is finely observed and sensitively modelled
with economy of line and that which is mere representation, a form
of three dimensional photograph that often verges on the kitsch.
In writing of his own Gregory quotes Josef Skyvorecky, "Art
captures the essence which reality sometimes more sometimes less,
spreads thin. In art, the essence presents itself as an undiluted,
powerful possibility and because art incarnates what is possible it
can and does mean anything to the viewer."
Ian Gregory’s animals can be savage, hounds with exaggerated
limbs crouch in aggressive pose, bared teeth behind a curled lip and
that slightly sideways look that shows the whites of their eyes
announce that you are about to be attacked. Others have that head
down, tail in, sneaky ‘I’m coming round you to nip your arse’ look.
Fighting cocks frozen in that earnest dance of death, feet and claws
up ready to defend or to cut and opponent open with a downward
slash. They can be frightening and disturbing.
They can also be comedic. Fat lazy pigs and sleeping dogs are
cleverly depicted. Ample folds of flabby flesh apparently quickly
and easily achieved with clay being allowed to be clay, no performed
moulded carcasses here.
Perhaps the most alarming, disarming even shocking depictions are
human figures sometimes modelled in isolation and other times in
conjunction with the animals. Grotesque humanoids lifted from our
worst nightmare, genitals dangling and arms akimbo strike poses of
unlikely elegance and poetic sensitivity relying on the trickery of
weight and visual counter balance that clay allows him so easily to
achieve with gravity defying composition. The lightness of stance
and almost ballet like poise of many of these characters especially
when posed with a small bird or animal seem very much at odds with
the leering ugliness of the faces. Red lipped tarts with painted
pink nipples sit in inviting pose each one modelled with absolute
minimum attention to detail and yet each with it s own personality.
The sexual overtones are obvious. I’m sure though the intention is
not to shock. Gregory takes much of his imagery from the pages of
mythology especially where there is an obvious man and animal
relationship to explore.
He chooses clay and the "battlefield of the elements of earth,
fire and water" as his medium to illustrate where others may have
chosen paper and paint. Gregory is merely allowing us the privilege
to have sight of his own personal vision of scenes conjured from
whatever sources that intrigue and amuse him. Ian Gregory is a
inveterate experimenter always ready to try a new method of
construction or glazing combination or firing technique.
Recently he has started to create much larger forms using ‘paper’
clay. He builds up the large dogs layer by layer working from a
steel ‘skeleton’ that remains inside the dog during and after the
raku type firing. He builds and dismantles kilns quicker than anyone
I have known and will often devise a ‘kiln’ to suit a single piece
of work. His life size figures for example had their own personal
kiln built around them. Another recent development is the post
firing reduction of slips that yields rich, deep colours of blue,
pink, red and violet and are used to great effect on some of the
more light hearted animal pieces. The Raku fire and the post firing
reduction of the white glaze to enhance the crackle and blacken the
unglazed areas is well suited to the modelled work. The selective
omission of glaze around the face of an animal, for instance,
heightens the dramatic effect and requires experience, insight and
the ability to envisage the finished effect beforehand.
The reintroduction of saltglaze has in one sense brought Ian
Gregory full circle. It was with this capricious fire that Gregory
made his name as a potter. Now the salting technique that leaves no
mark hidden form its pervasive presence serves to enliven the
surfaces of is animals, bringing them to life in a way that only
saltglaze can.
For the future I know that there are plans for life size horses
and riders, the paper clay providing the means to construct and fire
massive pieces. It will be fascinating to watch where Ian Gregory’s
thirst for new techniques of construction and expression of ideas
will lead him.
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